More than 100,000 refugees have now arrived in Armenia from neighbouring Nagorno-Karabakh since Azerbaijan took control of the region in a lightning-fast offensive, the head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said late Friday.
“Many are hungry, exhausted and need immediate assistance,” Filippo Grandi said on social media.
“UNHCR and other humanitarian partners are stepping up their support to the Armenian authorities, but international help is very urgently required,” Grandi said.
A United Nations spokesperson on Friday said the UN would be sending a humanitarian team to Nagorno-Karabakh this weekend. Stéphane Dujarric said it would assess the needs of those who remain as well as those who are on the move. It would be the UN’s first mission there in close to 30 years.
The CBC’s Briar Stewart was in Yerevan, Armenia on Saturday where she spoke to Armenian actress Anais Sardaryan, who’s co-ordinating the efforts of about 100 volunteers to collect food and other supplies donated by local residents and businesses.
Sardaryan said will take a couple of days to distribute the aid, which she finds frustrating when she can already hear “all these hungry, crying babies who don’t have anything, and there’s little we can do for them now.”
Armenia has asked the European Union for assistance to help it deal with the flood of refugees, the office of Italy’s prime minister said on Saturday.
The Armenian government has said it only has enough resources to resettle about 40,000 refugees.
Nazeli Baghdasaryan, the press secretary to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, said 100,417 people have now arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, which had a population of around 120,000 before Azerbaijan reclaimed the region.
Ethnic Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh — 90,000 of them and counting — just keep coming. They mourn the lives they left behind, traumatized by the conflict they’re fleeing in the contested region that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
A total of 21,043 vehicles had crossed the Hakari Bridge, which links Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, since last week, Baghdasaryan said. Some lined up for days because the lone road leading to Armenia had become jammed.
The Armenian government on Saturday confirmed the exodus has nearly emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of residents since Azerbaijan retook control of the enclave in a military offensive on Sept. 19, which reportedly killed at least 200 ethnic Armenians and dozens of Azerbaijani soldiers.
Azerbaijan’s offensive lasted just 24 hours and ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire deal that called on Nagorno-Karabakh’s forces to surrender and disarm.
After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia — but the mountainous enclave remained internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan’s territory.
During a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed earlier.
The self-proclaimed government on Thursday announced it would dissolve itself by the end of the year and the republic would cease to exist, according to a decree released on Facebook by the republic’s president, Samvel Shahramanyan.
